Record Low Temperature
Sept 12, 2003 – Wolfgang Ketterle and his
colleagues at MIT were able to reach a record
low temperature of 450 pK. An image of the
cooling chamber can be seen to the right.
Source http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/1821
4
*The freezing of Philip J. Fry also deserves an honorable mention
(occurring approximately a few seconds before the year 2000).
Cryogenic Technology Could be Used
to Help Solve Peak Power Demands
•August 11, 2010- Researchers at
the University of Leeds in the U.K.
and the Chinese Academy of
Sciences are proposing a system
for meeting peak power demands
by storing excess energy in the
form of liquid nitrogen and
oxygen.
•Since demand for power varies throughout each day, power companies
have to make sure they can meet the peak demand, and consequently
produce more energy than necessary at off-peak hours. This proposed
method uses the excess energy to cool the nitrogen and oxygen, and then
uses warmth from the environment and waste heat from the power plant to
boil the liquid, driving a turbine, and producing more energy when it is
needed.
Article and image source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-08/cryogen-tanks-couldhelp-power-plants-meet-peak-energy-demand
Sr Bose-Einstein Condensation has been achieved
In November 2009, two research group from the Universitat Innsbruck in Austria and Rice University in Texas, US , first realized BEC of
Sr which has two valence atom at 2.5 µK by advanced laser-cooled techniques. This is a significant achievement in the blossoming
fields of precision frequency metrology, quantum information and ultracold chemistry.
Figure: The mass scaling of the well-known scattering length of 88-Sr predicts the feasibility of evaporative cooling of 84-Sr. For the
84-Sr isotope, the important step of evaporative cooling is effective at creating a large BEC.
Source: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v2/94
http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.200401.pdf
http://physics.aps.org/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.200402.pdf
Figure: http://physics.aps.org/view_image/3077/medium/1
Sixth State of Matter Found
Fermionic Condensate
•Found on December 16, 2003 by Deborah Jin by using 500000
Potassium-40 atoms cooled to 5*10-8K and with a time varying
magnetic field applied.
•Similar to Bose-Einstein Condensates but instead of bosons going to a
single energy state fermions are used
(Left: Deborah Jin, from University of Colorado, founder of Fermionic
Condensate. Right: False color images of condensate formed from
pairs of fermion potassium atoms. From left to right shows the
strength of attraction of the atoms with the varied magnetic field.)
Source Article http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/12feb_fermi/
Right Image http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2004/images/21.jpg
Left Image http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/world/17/3/3/pwpia1_03-04.jpg